• The slim overall chance of a child using its own cord blood for transplant has been estimated to be about one case in 2,700.
• Many private banks do not have a program in place to check the quality of the cells. Even when specially trained people collect cord blood, almost 1 in 3 units are deemed unusable and discarded by public cord banks.
• Many doctors who treat children with leukemia or other medical problems do not think that these children should receive their own stem cells for two reasons: (1) A child’s own stem cells may already have a genetic change that caused their disease. (2) In children with leukemia, these cells may not fight off the child’s leukemia cells as well as the stem cells from another person (this is called graft-vs.-leukemic effect).
• Directed donation of cord blood (either through private banking or through special arrangements with a public bank) should be considered when there is a specific diagnosis of a disease within a family known to be treatable with stem cell transplantation.
• Although stem cells from umbilical cord blood could be used for adult relatives, very few of these attempts have been successful to date. A major problem is that there are not enough stem cells in one baby’s umbilical cord blood to be sufficient for an adult transplant